The
Zaporozhye Regional Centre of Study of the Problems of Jewish History and
Culture of the Southern Ukraine.

“Jewish
Population of the South of Ukraine: exploration and documents” 1994

(provided by Michoel Ronn , USA)

Translated by
Pavel Bernshtam and Chaim Freedman.

State
Archives of Zaporozhye.

(Fond 1335, Opis
6, Spr 6, Archive 182.)

The findings
of the Committee of Enquiry into the atrocities committed by the German-Fascist
occupation army during the Second World War. 23rd of September in
the year 1943 in the village Novo-Zlatopol, Zaporozhye Oblast.

During the
excavation of four pits in the area captured by the gendarmeria of the German
occupiers, were revealed the victims of the Fascist terror.

According to the
statements of inhabitants of Novo-Zlatopol, in these four pits are the bodies
of those executed by the Fascists and their helpers, about 800 Soviet citizens.
In one pit alone 5 x 6 meters were buried 370 bodies.

Here were not
only executions but also torture as evidenced on a burnt skeleton.

Mass killing of Soviet citizens began
immediately after the German occupation of the Novo-Zlatopol region.

They brought
Soviet citizens from all the villages of Novo-Zlatopol region to the yard of
the gendarmaria, imprisoned them, and annihilated them in groups of 100 or more
people at the hands of groups of SS who arrived in Novo-Zlatopol specially for
this purpose. Those who were taken to be executed were forced to dig for
themselves the pit and then 6 or 7 people were killed. Each successive group
had to arrange those killed in a row in the pit and so more bodies were laid in
the pit. Children were killed in the presence of their parents. Small children
were thrown alive into the pit.

In order to
silence the shrieks of the victims, they made artificial noise by beating all
sorts of vessels such as buckets.